Opinion: Political elites have lost control of the campaign, and they can’t stand it

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Whatever else you want to call this presidential campaign, you can hardly call it politics as usual.

A billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star who many Americans loath is leading a pack of 17 contenders for the Republican nomination in an ongoing circus that the term “clown car” no longer fully describes.

On the Democratic side, the bubble of entitlement that seemed destined to carry frontrunner Hillary Clinton to an easy nomination is slowly deflating and coming down to earth.

The insurgency against the political class evident in the Tea Party movement, the Trump candidacy and the surprise success of Bernie Sanders cannot repeatedly be dismissed as temporary departures from the norm.

Those pundits, like Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post, who think it is too late to stop the Clinton juggernaut are closing their eyes to what is the slow-motion implosion of the Clinton campaign.

If there was any lingering doubt about Clinton’s ineptitude on the campaign trail, it was definitively laid to rest last weekend in Iowa, when she lamely joked how much she loves Snapchat because “those messages disappear all by themselves.”

You don’t have to be a hardened Clinton critic like Charles Krauthammer to deem this remark “cringe-worthy” in light of the swirling controversy surrounding her emails as secretary of state.

Clinton continues to dig deeper into the hole of dissembling she started when she disingenuously claimed in March that she used a private email server for the convenience of having only a single device for emails.

And now two inspectors general, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the collective intelligence community are tracking down just how serious a breach of national security this “convenience” constituted.

This is not a joking matter and it’s not going away. And there is still the simmering controversy of the Clinton Foundation donations that is sure to come to a boil once again.

The talk of Vice President Joe Biden entering the race is not sentimental yearning to fulfill a dying son’s wish or glowing embers of political ambition, but the hard-nosed reality that Democrats may need someone to come to the rescue.

Whether 72-year-old Biden would commit to serving only a single term or not, as some are suggesting, the fact is he would be stepping in as a caretaker president, preserving the legacy of the Obama presidency and preventing a Republican from winning the White House.

And which Republican would that be? Donald Trump, who continues to defy the conventional political wisdom that he will flame out? Or Jeb Bush, whose own particular brand of ineptitude continues to sink him in the polls?

The more primary voters see of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the less they like him. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio gets good marks from pundits but seems callow alongside Trump’s braggadocio and is trailing in the polls.

The mainstream media and the Beltway pundits basically consider all this a temporary aberration. Things will settle down, the dust will clear, and we will, eventually, get back to politics as normal.

But they may be missing the real story here. It is a story that has characterized the last decade and a half of American politics, if not longer.

It is a story of stolen elections, illegal wars, a dysfunctional Congress, a rogue financial sector, a corrupted Supreme Court, and soaring inequality in wealth and income.

We may be nearing the end of the useful life of our political system, at least as it is currently functioning — or rather, not functioning.

The insurgency against the political class evident in the Tea Party movement, the Trump candidacy and the surprise success of Bernie Sanders cannot repeatedly be dismissed as temporary departures from the norm.

The fact that artificial and outmoded structures like the Electoral College and gerrymandered congressional districts are thwarting the principle of one person, one vote and denying a majority of voters their rightful representation — even as many citizens are being denied their right to vote — simply does not make for a sustainable political system.

Sanders is expressly calling for a “political revolution” to reverse the nation’s drive toward oligarchy, while tea partiers want to “take our country back.”

Politics as a profession is not attracting a high caliber of talent, as is evident in the mediocre accomplishments of virtually all the presidential aspirants. Trump, for all his flaws, has the best claim to being truly successful — not only because he’s made a lot of money but because he is at the top of his profession.

If the 2008 and 2012 campaigns still showed some semblance of traditional politics, these vestiges are now crumbling as one candidate few people trust and another candidate few people like dominate the news, and neither seems likely to be an effective president.

Where will it all end? It is the nature of revolutions and historic transitions in general that those living through them cannot see the outcome.

In the meantime, all we can do is to hang on and stop pretending that everything is going to settle down into predictable patterns anytime soon.

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use. Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. All quotes are in local exchange time. Real-time last sale data for U.S. stock quotes reflect trades reported through Nasdaq only. Intraday data delayed at least 15 minutes or per exchange requirements.